


Return to Me

by theskywasblue



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Explicit Language, F/M, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-09 11:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is made of meetings and partings, and sometimes, people are meant to part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return to Me

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** _Naruto_ and its associated characters are not mine. I make no profit from this work.
> 
> **Author's Notes:** Loosely inspired by a section of "The Rubßiyßt of Omar Khayyßm" by Edward FitzGerald, included at the end of the story

One, two, three, four, five. Wall. Turn. One, two, three, four five.

He clenched and unclenched his fists, chewed on his bottom lip until a trickle of blood ran down to his bottom teeth. Moving was good, it kept him sane, kept him from wanting to hit things, even if he was wearing a path into the tiled floor.

The light above the examining room was still red. How could it possibly take so long? Was there something wrong with Sasuke?

Just_ thinking_ that name made a chill run down Naruto's spine. Ten years of waiting, ten years of hunting – and having Sasuke back was as simple as waking up one morning to Shikamaru pounding on his door, shouting something about how Sasuke was back; and all Naruto had been able to think was that he had known, always known, that Sasuke would come home one day the same way he had left, and it would be just as if he had never left at all.

The light above the exam room went off with a sudden buzz that made Naruto flinch in the instant before his heart slammed into the back of his throat. His first instinct was to rush the door, force his way in; but before he could act on it, Sakura was in front of him, blocking the way.

She was wearing her professional face, and the sight made the blood in Naruto's veins go to ice.

"S-Sakura-chan…Sasuke – Sasuke is…?"

She met his eyes, and, for the first time in years, he couldn't tell what she was thinking.

"Is it Sasuke," he managed finally, "or is it…"

He couldn't say _that_ name, and he didn't know why. It was as if saying it would bring that twisted creature there, to destroy the fragile joy smouldering in his chest.

Sakura took a long, deep breath. Her mask never slipped.

Somehow, he had expected her to be crying, but in the end it also made sense that she would be stronger than he was.

"It's Sasuke."

That was all he had to know. He pushed his way past her, ignoring her cry of protest – something like 'but he's not…', that he didn't quite hear as he slammed the doors open.

The sharp tang of disinfectant ineffectively masking the sour musk of sick sweat burned his nostrils, and he brought a hand up out of instinct to try and block it out.

"Dammit dobe…do you always have to make so much fucking noise?"

"Sasuke?" he cast his head around the room, but it was so achingly, blindingly white – the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the bed sheets – that he couldn't see anything but the light that was flaming against the backs of his eyeballs. He felt Sakura come in behind him, hands on his shoulders turning him towards the window.

His first thought was _that's not Sasuke_.

It was a thing wrapped in a sheet, parchment-white skin stretched tight over jagged bones, slumped in a hard-backed chair like a child's toy forgotten. The face was gaunt, cheeks sunken, cheekbones protruding, lips chapped and peeling, all framed by lank, greasy, shoulder-length hair.

"You should have left the bandages on," Sakura's voice was tight, scolding, just barely masking desperation with anger.

The shape in the chair didn't bother to open its eyes to even look at her.

Naruto took a step forward. Sakura's fingers clutched at his shirt to try and keep him in place.

"Sasuke?"

The smile he received in response was hideous, predatory, and almost familiar in a way that made Naruto want to lash out with his fists.

"You were expecting someone else?" the voice was dry, like dead leaves breaking apart underfoot, but somehow still overflowing with arrogance and pride.

Naruto took a deep breath, shattering the silence that skittered in the wake of Sasuke's words like a starving dog, "Aren't you even going to look at me?"

"Naruto!" A panicked hiss from Sakura, the first fracture in her perfect mask.

"Is that what you want?" Sasuke's voice was scathing, Naruto remembered the feel of it burning the back of his brain from ten years earlier.

"Sasuke-kun _no…_" that was probably the closest thing to a command that she had ever given him and Naruto felt the world tilt a little under the press of his feet.

Sasuke's eyes came open with a sound like feathers being crushed, and Naruto felt his sanity waste a little under the pressure of empty sockets.

Sasuke laughed, that same abrasive laugh that still echoed off the stone walls of the Valley of the End, "He wanted it, but I changed my mind. I was sick of the damn Sharingan anyway."

***

"I don't think this is a good idea."

Naruto looked over his shoulder at the man he still called sensei. Sasuke was nearby, leaning boneless against the wall, his fingers now and again tugging on the bandages around his face.

Naruto couldn't make him stop.

"This is the only thing I _can_ do."

Kakashi's face was patient, understanding, but wary, "He needs more help than you can give him Naruto."

The older man had enough experience to know danger when he saw it – and also to know that there are desires and needs which outweigh all danger, that there are things people want, things they think they want, the things that they will never realise they would have been better off without.

"He might come for you," As the legendary ninja turned away to walk up the street, the broken thing that had once been his student called to him, "it's the last one – that eye of yours – you'd better not keep it."

"C'mon Sasuke," Naruto hurried to his side, voice overflowing with false cheer, smile stretched so tight across his face it seemed a sharp breath away from snapping. He tried to take his once-friend's arm, but Sasuke pushed him away, snarling like a wounded dog, "We're here already Sasuke, we're home."

***

Sasuke trailed his fingers through the water, listened to the steady drip of the tap. It was getting cold and he didn't care. He could feel his skin wrinkling, swelling, peeling, around him.

"You don't have to sit there." He had known he wasn't alone by the shift of the air. If he tried he could almost picture Naruto sitting on the edge of the sink with his head in his hands.

Except that it was a child he saw, swinging his legs back and forth, and Sasuke knew, by the feeling of Naruto's hands on him, the power of his shoulders, that the blonde was not a child anymore.

"I know I don't_ have to_," Naruto sounded infuriatingly patient.

"I'm not going to drown myself."

"I know."

"I could have killed myself a hundred times by now."

"I know."

"If I wanted to do it right now, you couldn't stop me."

A hesitation, the smallest, defeated sigh, "I know."

Sasuke was glad that he had broken the other man, if only a little, and that small joy allowed him to forget, for an instant, about the indignity of being watched while he tried to bathe.

Not that he had even touched the soap, just sat in the water or floated like a corpse.

"What happened to you Sasuke…" Naruto's voice was so soft he could have been speaking to himself, or not speaking at all, "You never used to be like this."

"And you never used to be a pansy-ass dobe…oh wait…"

Naruto's feet hit the tiled floor with a smack, and the heat of his shadow fell over Sasuke. A hot, thick hand plunged into the frigid bathwater, snatched the washcloth from Sasuke's fingers and pressed it down hard between his shoulders blades.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sasuke coiled protectively in on himself, incensed as the washcloth scored across his skin.

"You can't sit in there all night," was the reply through gritted teeth.

"Fuck you."

"You'll get sick."

"Get your hands off me dobe."

"Sit still."

Sasuke thrashed, twisted, kicked and flailed his arms. The sound of water splashing all the way to the ceiling was drowned out by his maddened screams, the metallic clang of his feet and ankles bruising against the faucet, and the crack of his head against the wall hard enough to leave a dent and make the world spin.

But his convulsions died out as his energy did, which was all too soon in the sad thing his once powerful body had become, and he lay panting in the bottom of a nearly empty tub, surreptitiously relieved by the ache in his head.

"Are you done yet?" Naruto's voice was tired. Sasuke was secretly pleased with himself, but he didn't have enough left in him to say so.

***

It hurt to look at him, like watching an animal caught with its leg caught in a trap, gnawing at the limb.  
It hurt even more because she had once loved him so much, and more still because she had been ready to move on, and now he was back again, tearing open old wounds in her heart and soul with sadistic glee.

She looked back over her shoulder towards the kitchen, wanting to be with Naruto and not the thing across the table, and the creak of her chair betrayed her to his ever-listening ears.

"You can't stand to be near me can you?"

He sat so still across from her that it was hard to tell he was breathing.

"What do you mean Sasuke-kun?" She kept her emotion locked away inside, gave him the same tone she used to tell someone that their team mate or lover, friend or child was dead, and most importantly, still spoke to him as if he were the person she remembered.

Or maybe that tone was for herself.

Sasuke smiled at her and she wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or scream.

Naruto came in from the kitchen, set lunch out on the table with slow, deliberate movements, fixing Sakura with an apologetic smile as he sat down. He knew that she didn't want to be there, but he couldn't leave Sasuke yet. Maybe he would never be able to.

Sasuke's hands groped across the table top, one closing across a peach, while the other found the handle of a knife.

"You'll hurt yourself," Naruto reached toward him, "Let me do it."

The knife flashed, a quick glint of sliver, sent an arch of blood high into the air to fall in thick drops on the wooden table.

Suddenly Sakura knew where all the stinging little cuts on Naruto's hands had come from.

Naruto slumped back into his chair, picked at his food in silence, his injured hand hiding in his lap. Sasuke turned the peach in his hands until he found the stem and the crease with his thumb, then pressed the still-bloody knife through the yellow and pink skin with calculated deliberation.

"Don't you want to know?" Sasuke asked suddenly. He was looking at her; Sakura could feel the pressure of his empty gaze, "How it happened?"

"No," she replied flatly, staring into her rice bowl. She could imagine.

Naruto was looking at his once-friend in silent horror, as if watching a train-wreck in slow motion.

"It was terribly easy…" Sasuke kept his voice low, barely above a whisper. The peach had come apart in his hands, juice running down his wrists, dripping thickly to the table, "They're soft you know."

"Eat your lunch," Naruto said anxiously.

"Fuck you dobe," Sasuke laid the peach halves on the tabletop, ran his fingers across the wet flesh, "They pop eventually, when you stick your fingers in you know…enough pressure and…" he dug two fingers in sharply around the peach pit and it burst from the overripe flesh, skidding across the table and striking Sakura's plate with a wet thump.

Sasuke laughed, "Just like that."

Sakura dropped her chopsticks, covered her mouth with both hands to keep the bile down.

"That's enough Sasuke," Naruto's voice sharpened with anger.

"What?" Sasuke sneered, "I thought she was a doctor. Can't she handle it?"

"I said _enough…_"

"She always was a whiny little bitch…"

Naruto's chair screamed across the linoleum, clattered to the floor as he ripped Sasuke from his chair, hauled him to his feet.

"Don't you dare…" he snarled through his teeth, "Call her that again…"

"Or what?"

"Naruto!" Sakura reached desperately across the table, fingers scrabbling at the hem of his shirt. She couldn't watch this; she had never been able to watch them fight.

Naruto breathed in Sasuke's face, fist wrapped so tight in the collar of his shirt that the fabric groaned under the strain, "I'll kick your ass."

He released Sasuke, and Sasuke stumbled backwards until his knees hit the bed and he fell onto it, hit his head against the wall but didn't seem to notice.

"Promises dobe…" he breathed finally, "You're always making ones you can't keep."

***

It was a relief to be left alone.

He could walk the small apartment, use his fingers, and ears to feel the small room out, find the cutlery drawer, the closet, the pantry.

He tried to place himself in the context of that small, cluttered, unbearably lived-in room, thick with the smell of food and warm bodies, and he realised that he didn't fit. A square peg in a round hole.

He knew Sakura didn't want him there. He didn't know what Naruto wanted.

He slumped on the floor, ran his hands back and forth across the worn wood, dragged up splinters under his nails until he heard Naruto come in.

Strange, to be able to recognize someone by their breathing and the fall of their footsteps alone.

"Fuck…" he could imagine the look on the blonde's face – except that it was still a child's face that he saw in the back of his mind.

Sasuke allowed himself, no matter the indignity, to be brought to his feet, placed in a chair like an infant, listened to Naruto go to the bathroom for the first aid kit.

"How long have you been fucking her?" He couldn't help but ask, because it would sting Naruto as much as the splinters under his nails stung him, and pain seemed only fair trade between them.

How had it ended up that way? He couldn't even remember.

He was starting to think that maybe he wasn't Sasuke after all, but he wasn't sure how he was supposed to know the difference between himself and someone else.

The medicine cabinet door slammed. Sasuke could hear the mirror crack like an ice-cube dropped in water.

"Show me your hands."

The warmth of Naruto's body infuriated him.

"Because, you know, she used to love me."

He pictured Naruto biting his tongue, drawing a tiny bead of blood to his lips.

"Has she ever called out my name while you're inside her?"

Then he was on his feet, and he could feel Naruto's nails in his throat, rivulets of blood running down to his collar bones.

"Well?" he choked out, enjoying the sound of his own voice cracking, "Has she?"

Naruto dropped him, and he crumbled underneath his own weight before Naruto fell on him, pressing him hard into the hot, sweating floor.

The first hit slammed his head back against the floor; the second knocked two of the molars on the left side of his mouth loose; the third cracked the bridge of his nose and the back of his throat filled with blood until Sasuke's laugh bubbled and spat.

Naruto shook atop him with repressed fury. The crook of his neck smelled of sweat, sex, rage, and Sakura's shampoo. His breath was fiery hot in Sasuke's ear as he snarled out the first piece of truth he had spoken in weeks.

"I wish you had _never_ come back."

***

When Naruto woke, Sasuke was gone.

"Sakura-chan!" he pounded on her door, the wood splintering beneath fists still darkened with Sasuke's blood. When she opened the door he grabbed hold of her, desperate, "Sakura-chan, Sasuke he's…"

And she was wearing that face again, her eyes were empty, "I know Naruto…they already found him. He's…"

"NO!" he shook his head so that he wouldn't be able to hear her voice over the slosh of blood in his ears, "No, no, nonono…"

"Shhh," she put her arms around him, pulled him close even as he tried to push her away, held him until he stopped resisting and rested his head on her shoulder, "It's alright Naruto…It's alright."

He let the tears run down his face, soak the collar of her dress, "He'll come back…" he whispered softly, "I know he will…Just like before…"

"Yes," Sakura kissed him carefully, mournfully, "of course he will."

-End-

_From: "The Rubßiyßt of Omar Khayyßm."_

I sent my Soul through the invisible,  
Some letter of that after-life to spell:  
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,  
And answer'd "I myself am Heav'n and Hell."

Heav'n but the vision of fulfill'd desire,  
And Hell the shadow of a soul on fire,  
Cast on the darkness into which ourselves,  
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

We are no other than a moving row  
Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go  
Round with this sun-illumin'd lantern held  
In midnight by the Master of the Show;

Impotent pieces of the game He plays  
Upon this checker-board of nights and days;  
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,  
And one by one back in the closet lays.

The ball no question makes of ayes and noes  
But right or left as strikes the Player goes;  
And He that toss'd you down into the field,  
_He_ knows about it all—HE knows—HE knows!

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,  
Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit  
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,  
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.

And that inverted bowl they call the Sky,  
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,  
Lift not your hands to _It_ for help—for It  
As impotently rolls as you or I.

Edward Fitzgerald


End file.
